lamps down Ludgate Hill burnishing their wet umbrellas so that they resembled insects’ wings. Nancy had no umbrella. She lifted her face and let the thin, cold drizzle wash away the grime of the day.
Fleet Street was always busy but tonight the road was at a standstill, choked with idling buses and wagons bearing great webs of paper to the newspaper printworks. She stopped for a moment at the kerb, intending to cross over to buy Cornelius an evening paper from an old news vendor who always gave her a cheerful good evening. But the stationary vehicles offered no room to pass. In the distance she could hear shouting followed by a ragged burst of cheering.
She became aware of a big cream-coloured car standing motionless just three feet away. A man was leaning forward in the rear seat, and she noticed the chauffeur’s peaked cap as he tilted his head to listen to what his passenger was saying. A deep blast on the car’s horn followed. Hooting was perfectly pointless, she thought impatiently, because anyone could see that the road was blocked all the way to Ludgate Circus. She was about to step off the pavement and somehow worm her way between the vehicles and through the clouds of exhaust fumes, but she hesitated for two seconds for a last look at the elongated curves of the cream bonnet. The raised black eyebrow of the wheel arch was close enough for her to have stroked it with her fingertips. As she hung there, the car door was thrown open and the passenger stepped out. The polished handle just grazed her elbow.
‘I am so sorry. I almost knocked you over.’
The man was tall, wearing a soft hat. He lifted it politely and she saw smooth fair hair and a narrow, chiselled face.
‘It’s all right. I was staring at your car instead of crossing the road.’
‘Were you? Do you like it?’
‘My father would. He loves cars. He used to have a De Dion-Bouton before the war but he had to sell it.’
‘Poor chap, that must have been hard for him. They are beautiful machines.’
‘He has a Ford now.’
The man raised a sympathetic eyebrow. ‘Quite serviceable, I should think. This one is a Daimler, the new model.’
As he spoke, the car gave a shudder and the engine stalled. The man gently shoved the running board with the shiny toe of his shoe. ‘Not as reliable as a De Dion, as you can see. What’s the trouble this time, Higgs?’
The chauffeur hurried to unclip and fold back the bonnet.
‘Spark-ignition again, Mr Maitland, I’d say. Don’t like the rain, it seems.’
Mr Maitland stared down the street.
He asked Nancy, ‘Do you know what’s causing the delay?’
The chanting and cheering was louder and she could hear the shrill, familiar blasts of police whistles.
‘A march or protest of some sort. Heading for the Embankment, probably. Is there a vote in Parliament tonight?’
He frowned. ‘Yes. I wonder who it is this time? Jobless ex-servicemen, coal miners? Suffragettes?’
She disliked this form of the word. ‘I would know if it was suffragists because I would be with them. But women do have the vote now, you know. Some of us do, at any rate.’
‘Not you, you are too young.’
‘I am twenty-one.’
He looked at her, and she found herself staring straight back. She had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.
He added, ‘I’m not unsympathetic to unemployed men, by the way, or to the miners. I shouldn’t have let impatience with the car and the hold-up get the better of me. I apologise again.’
Nancy marched a few steps on the spot to indicate how free she was, not encumbered even by an umbrella. The felt brim of her hat was beginning to droop with the weight of damp.
‘I usually find walking is the best way. It’s fast, free and good for you.’
‘Yes, on this occasion you’ll certainly get wherever you are going before me. Are you in a hurry?’
She hesitated. ‘Not really. I’m on my way home.’
‘I was in a hurry. But I’m already late, and I expect I’ll be invited to plenty more dull City dinners.’
Poor Higgs folded a piece of sacking to protect his trousers and knelt to peer underneath the Daimler. The buses and lorries had not moved which meant the police must have closed the road.
‘Would you like to come and have a drink?’
No, Nancy prepared to say, but another unexpected instinct shouted Yes, oh yes.
‘There’s a place just down that alley,’ she pointed.
‘Very good.’ Mr Maitland cheerfully told Higgs that they would be waiting inside, out of the rain, and swept Nancy towards an inviting doorway.
The pub was well known to Nancy and she didn’t think about the row of workmen at the bar, or the cindery fire, or the reek of spilled beer rising from the bare floorboards. But the man took all this in before pulling out a chair for her at the table closest to the hearth. Only when he had made her comfortable did he remove his own coat and white silk scarf. He was wearing immaculate evening dress, quite different from the kind Devil wore on stage. He spoke two words to the usually surly publican who came running with kindling to restore the fire. He called Mr Maitland ‘sir’ without a flicker of insolence.
Nancy asked for a half of bitter, and two polished glasses were set in front of them without any spillage on the table. This man was used to being served.
‘Do you usually drink beer?’ he asked her.
‘Yes.’ It was hardly worth pointing out that she liked whisky but couldn’t afford it, or gin, or even sherry.
Although he didn’t smile readily, he had an unusual dimple high on his left cheek that seemed to deepen when he was amused. Nancy took off her sorry hat and her hair came down with it. He looked more closely at her.
‘My name is Gil Maitland.’
‘How do you do? I am Nancy Wix.’
‘I am pleased to meet you, Miss Wix.’
She could almost believe this, because he seemed suddenly to be in a much better humour. A slow tide of blood rose from her throat to her cheeks. The warmth of the bar made her nose run and her chilblains itched almost unbearably. She had to sniff, and clench her fists to stop herself clawing at her knuckles. Gil Maitland took out a folded handkerchief and handed it over. It was thick and starched and almost certainly monogrammed.
When she tried to hand it back he said, ‘Please, keep it.’
There would be plenty more handkerchiefs where this one had come from, she thought, laid in a tallboy by a laundry maid overseen by the valet. From this single detail she found she could imagine all the ease of Gil Maitland’s life. With Jinny Main and their other friends she would have dismissed him as the enemy, but now she felt oddly benign towards him. He was only a man, another human
